Last Saturday night I read a new poem at an open mic event. The next morning I got up and wrote three new poems. “I Just Won’t” is one of those poems. I will read it this Saturday night at the open mic event!

My sponsor in one of the 12 step programs, after finding out the details of the night the group took me to Denny’s, encouraged me not to be silent – but to confront the offenders, in an appropriate way. I was so angry I didn’t feel safe trying to talk to them in person. So I began to write a letter to each of them. I wrote and discarded 4 or 5 versions, each a little less angry and confrontive. But they helped me get some of the feelings out of my system, so I could write a more appropriate version. I let it sit for several days. Then I had several people read it to ensure it was a balanced response. I hand wrote and mailed a copy to each of the six people who had been at Denny’s and saying things to me that night.

The letter follows:

August 12, 1988

Dear ______,

The time when the group of you came to my house and took me to Denny’s has been a devastating emotional experience for me.

That day I had been in great pain. I came home (from the party) because it was right for me. I was vulnerable, and I needed space.

When you all came to my house, you each looked so agitated, I was mistrustful. I felt invaded, unsafe.

When you said you were doing this out of love, but what I felt was your fear and anger, I became confused, disoriented. My child ran and hid.

I felt attacked, accused, with no one to support me, protect me, defend me, affirm me. I felt alone, so alone.

I felt betrayed, rejected.

When I looked in your eyes and it seemed you didn’t believe what I said about my reality, it hurt me deeply, and I later cried like my soul was dying. That really hurt. I did not feel heard.

The message I received was that you did not think I could take care of myself. I felt discounted. I was insulted. I found out later that what fueled your action was talk at _____’s party that I might be at home contemplating suicide.

I was humiliated.

Then I grew angry!

VERY angry. How dare you, etc, etc ….

I am angry still.

So I say, I love you, and I am angry with your behavior.

I believe your actions were inappropriate, impulsive, and improperly motivated.

But so have been my old anger reactions. I am working hard on them, and I pledge to you to do my best to give you no cause to fear my anger.

And this means:

— I will look at you, but not with “The Look” – my angry face.

— I will say hello and acknowledge your presence.

— I may not be able to hug you.

— I may be very quiet for a while, so not to speak in haste.

— I may or may not be able to approach you, but you are free to approach

me if you wish. If I withdraw, it is because I grow angry and need space.

— I may look sad – seeing you brings up the pain of that horrible lonely night.

— If you wish to express feelings to me, I will listen, but will not respond or

react. If I am not in a place to receive it, I will tell you so.

I say again, I love you and I am angry with your behavior.

Love,

Dan

—-

Note: In the time since the Intervention and the events that followed, only one of the participants has ever talked with me about it. He was the prime motivator behind it all. He owned his part fully, and that what they did was terribly wrong. “No one deserved what happened to you that night, Dan.” His words were enormously healing.

This Anger Contract was my response to the events chronicled in my previous post, “The Betrayal.” A bogus Intervention had been done to me, and had forced me to get in touch with deep anger that I had been trying to release for several years. I knew I needed to do something radical to handle the situation, to be able to process my anger, yet not hurt anyone in the process. I had prepared contracts as a part of my job, and it suddenly occurred to me to prepare this contract. I knew if I committed to this document, I would honor it.

I had the original of this document signed by two people as witnesses. These two people knew all the participants, and had been involved in the party that led to the event. They were also the two people in whose arms I cried deeply about the horror of that evening. Heartfelt thanks to those two people – you know who you are.

I adhered to this contract for 2 years. The full events of that time will be included in my future book, “The Tiger Unveiled.”

DAN L. HAYS

ANGER CONTRACT

AND

SELF COMMITMENT

August 1, 1988

County of Harris

State of Texas

Whereas I, Dan Hays, attest that the following conditions and circumstances exist and did occur.

1. On the night of July 23, 1988, a group of six people came to my house late at night, woke me up and got me out of bed. As a group they took me to Denny’s and did an Intervention on me. The stated purpose was to confront my pattern of backing away from friends.

In the course of this Intervention, these people did express issues for which they were angry at me and hurt by me. Each of these persons was in a high state of personal distress. They projected numerous of their own personal fears upon me. They cast numerous accusations at me, which would only appropriately be addressed with each person singly. By nonobjection by the group to said accusations, the group gave power and group approval of and acceptance of those accusations. They gave me no positive feedback, and no support for what I might be feeling.

I later discovered that the basis of this action was a rumor which had been spread – publicly to a larger group, to my embarrassment, that I was at home contemplating suicide. This rumor had no basis in reality.

Another party who was not present for any of the previous actions, and had not been around me for three weeks, called my sponsor and alerted him that I was in a critical state of emotional distress.

All of the above parties, those who came to my house, and the one who called my sponsor, will hereinafter be referred to as The Abusers.

2. I have had a pattern of verbal abuse of people in the past, caused by low impulse control, which manifests itself as “angry words hastily spoken.” In this pattern I use my intellect, my ready access to words and verbal expression, and my anger to abuse and hurt others. My mouth goes off and my brain shuts off.

People have learned to fear me because of this pattern.

3. Another pattern of abuse I have had is one of “the silent treatment,” in which I will not speak to a person, but my great personal anger manifests itself through “The Look,” and people actually fear my anger. They fear the time when my anger will explode and lead to the verbal abuse. I suspect people even fear me physically. I know it because it was the way I feared my Father; I know how it feels, and have seen that fear in the eyes of others, toward me.

4. In January I did a 5th step on my anger toward my Dad. I continued through the 7th Step and asked God to remove that anger.

5. I recently read before another person, in the form of a grief therapy matrix what I call The Gun Incident. I had remembered the incident in January, and in it, my Father beat and abused me severely, threatening to kill me with a hunting rifle with which I had seen him kill deer. The number one listed loss I suffered from that incident had been my belief in my right to be angry.

6. I had been working with a sponsor for two and a half years who was familiar with my pattern of avoidance of direct anger toward my Father, and who felt after hearing the full details of the Intervention incident that I had a complete right to be angry about what happened, and encouraged me to begin to express my anger in appropriate ways.

7. In my opinion several of the Abusers were angry with me prior to the Intervention for issues I had with each of them singly, and wish to have me express my anger so they can feel justified in expressing their anger. I believe anger was also a motivation for the Intervention.

The Abusers have in my opinion begun in subtle ways, and may be expected to continue, to provoke my anger with regard to the Intervention incident – with provocative statements, and even in one case, directly trying to get me to say I was angry. The subconscious purpose of this is to expiate their guilt and shame with regard to said Intervention.

Given that all these conditions exist, I am experiencing extreme anger. It is my sincere desire to only express that anger in appropriate ways, to not give any person further cause to fear me because of my anger. Yet also, I have been one who has expressed anger, and no longer wish to express anger for the group, thereby allowing and enabling them to repress theirs. I’m tired of carrying this group’s anger.

In an anger slip with happened several weeks ago, I hurt someone I loved, very deeply; it affected me deeply, because for the first time I saw and felt the pain I had caused, in the eyes of the other person. Behavior of that kind is unacceptable to me on any level. I am willing to go to any lengths to stamp out this anger and verbal abuse pattern, yet while unburdening myself of the anger I still carry. I know much of it is about my Father; he is dead and I can’t hurt him with my anger any longer.

Yet The Abusers are alive, all people whom I still love very deeply, and though I have a right to be angry, hurting them through compulsive patterns in response to my anger is unacceptable, because I lose – by letting my anger rule me, and by possibly causing irreparable harm to relationships. I too, fear myself and my anger.

Because all these conditions exist, and are alarmingly volatile to me, I hereby make a commitment until August 1, 1989, at which time I will renegotiate this contract, either to extend it, or to terminate it. The conditions I commit to are:

1. I will not speak to any of The Abusers about the Intervention incident until it doesn’t matter any more.

2. I will not knowingly put myself in any situation where I will or may speak from anger. If I find myself in such a potential situation, I will remove myself immediately.

3. I will not share in meetings about this incident, unless I can be clear that I am not indulging in hidden agendas of divulging my anger, by sending messages indirectly to any of the parties involved.

4. Should any of The Abusers wish to talk to me, and it becomes apparent that they wish to talk about The Intervention Incident, I will request that I be allowed 10 minutes before hearing them. During that time I will attempt to determine if I am in an angry state, and if so, will decline to listen. If I agree and I begin to experience anger, I will immediately withdraw from the situation.

5. Where necessary, I will remain completely silent, and hereby put a “gag order” on myself, rather than continue the abuse.

6. Insofar as it is possible for me, I will attempt not to wear “The Look,” or to express anger by the silent treatment. If I discover myself doing so, I will withdraw myself from the situation, and process the anger.

7. I will use all methods now learned by me for appropriate expressions of anger, to dissipate this terrible load of anger I carry. This includes angry letters not to be mailed, beating on the bed with the racket, yelling in the truck, further 12 step work if necessary, the boxing gym, yelling in the presence of a neutral observer at an empty chair symbolically containing the object of my anger, and any other methods which my Higher Power reveals to me.

8. I will talk and keep talking to appropriate people about the past abuse I endured, the Intervention, which is still a hideous hurt for me

9. Should I wish to waive any conditions of this contract, I will wait 5 days, and talk to at least 3 people about my reasons for feeling it necessary to abrogate this commitment.

I have been badly damaged and hurt by anger, both by my Father, and by The Abusers. I have a right to my anger, all of it, and it is fully justified. But that anger does not justify the hurtful and damaging expressions of anger to which I have resorted in the past. Those patterns are unacceptable, and will not be tolerated. Let it end here.

I hereby solemnly agree and pledge to abide by the conditions of this self contract. Signed this day, _________________, until August 1, 1989.

My next several blog posts are all related to the same topic. They deal with something that happened to me in July of 1988. My Dad had died the previous Thanksgiving, and I was still in the grief process over that loss. As well, I was still involved with a 12 step program for people who had grown up around alcoholism. That group had grown to be like a family for me. Yet I had seen several situations where I needed to back away from people in that group, because the dynamic wasn’t healthy for me.

Then something happened that was one of the shocking turning points in my life. I have given a brief description of it in my blog post “Talk of Tigers/The Tiger Unveiled.” A group of people did an intervention on me. It wasn’t the kind of intervention where there is advanced planning, careful preparation, and a professional is retained to keep the process on track. Instead it was a testimony to the frightening power of codependency, and to the scariest aspect of a group working themselves up into a frenzy. In that state, things happen that normally would not. Those things happened to me.

This event will be the focus of an upcoming book I will publish entitled “The Tiger Unveiled.” These posts that will follow are several of the key components of that book. They don’t tell the whole story, but give greater depth perception to it. For some reason, I am being led to share these pieces right now. I think because it’s time to speak out, confront the sickness, and how the offenders can be protected and sheltered by a family system.

But I must also share what I did in response, which was a key to my whole recovery process.

As they sat down in a booth at Denny’s, what went through his mind was, “Oh, my God, this feels like an intervention.” There were six of them, and one of him. They had gotten him out of bed that night – he’d gone to bed early – and said they wanted to buy him dinner. From the first his intuition was that something was wrong. The people who came to his back door didn’t fit together – some of them didn’t even like each other. And they wanted to buy him dinner? This late? But he had gone along with them – because he trusted them, gave power to their words – in a sense they were like family.

He had seen these people earlier in the evening at a party. He had been in a lot of pain – because of grief over his Dad’s death, but also the pain of knowing that he must move on from some of these people. He loved them dearly, but he had to detach from them, for his own well being, to save himself. So when it got too emotionally crowded at the party, he went home.

Now as he sat in the middle of the booth, against the wall, surrounded by these people – trapped in a sense – his thought was: listen to what they have to say. Give them the benefit of the doubt – don’t get angry and get up and leave. Trust them. They began talking. They told him they wanted to confront his pattern of backing away from people. That felt strange. Couldn’t that have waited until tomorrow? They said they were doing this out of love. As he looked at them, they looked frightened, agitated. They made statements that sounded reasonable, but in some way sounded angry. The things they said about him could have been true about them as well. It sounded like they were describing themselves, but they were saying it was about him.

He grew confused. For years these people had been praising his steps toward health – now they were saying he was sick. They told him many things he “should” be doing. That was more confusing – some of these people weren’t even doing what they were telling him to do. It felt like nothing was good enough, or right enough. He began to feel that he could have been a complete saint and not have measured up in their eyes. He felt crushed under the weight of their expectations. He began to feel a sense of unreality.

Then came the talk of fear of him committing suicide. He grew more confused – where had that come from? He tried to explain, to tell them he knew what was going on with him, he was OK. As he looked at each person, he could see that they doubted. They had already decided not to believe him. It hurt. It hurt a lot. He began retreating, hiding inside himself, in a corner of his mind.

Their words grew more hurtful, more demanding. They were accusing him of things, diagnosing him – telling him how sick he was. Some of them grew more angry, more insistent. Other statements sounded loving, but underneath was a passive anger, an attempt to rob his reality, to take away the essence of who he was. He picked up on several statements of his that had been warped out of context. They brought up things that he had said to one person in confidence. He told them he did not feel it appropriate to tell them everything – it should be discussed with some of them privately, when he was ready, but not in front of a group. But they went on. Hammering, pressing. And he was alone. Against six people. There was no neutral person there, and he had no allies. He was alone. The weight of the numbers bore down on him, crushing him. He grew numb, withdrew into a shell. They mentioned love again, and took him home.

Part Two

Two days later it hit. He cried deeply, and for a long time, in the arms of two friends. His inner child cried out, “They tried to kill me. They tried to take away all I was. Someone protect me from them. My God, I was so alone.” And so he sobbed.

Several days after that, he found out the truth. They had spread a rumor about him at the party. That he was in deep emotional distress, and that he might even be at home contemplating suicide. It was not true. Had he been suicidal, he would have done it that night after they took him home.

But things began to make more sense. He began to talk to people who had been at the party. They gave their feedback. Two people mentioned the talk of impending suicide. Others used phrases like “mass hysteria,” and “little secret talking sessions.” One person had encouraged them to wait a few days. One person he had been talking to recently and who knew his emotional state had wanted to go along, but had been told “there are already enough people going.” His one ally had been denied him. It began to have the feel of a mob scene, people whipping themselves into a frenzy. He began to think back. He had seen each of the people when they first came to the party, and he now remembered that each looked agitated and strange even then.

He began to feel the violation, the irrational insanity of it all. He grew angry. He said so. You got the wrong guy. You got the wrong guy!

Part Three

And then – they turned their backs on him. The rest of the family closed in to comfort and protect the offenders, clean up the mess, and hide the evidence – which was him. So he got the closeout. The big chill. Gradually they made it clear he was no longer welcome. A curtain of silence began to fall over the incident. He said it didn’t bother him, it didn’t matter. But behind his masks and walls he was a deeply sensitive young man, and it hurt – in some ways it hurt more than the original violation. He hadn’t experienced this before. He had been popular within the family; now to be an outcast was a terrible, cruel punishment. He checked it out with people, to validate his reality. It was confirmed – no one mentioned him much any more.

He went away for a time, to lick his wounds, to let the hurts begin to heal. He began to deal with the deep anger welling up inside him. Gradually he grew stronger once again. He cleared out some of the hurtful messages they had burned into his brain. He came back and began to reclaim those things they had tried to take away from him. His sense of safety. His ability to trust.

And he went on. But he remembered. He would probably always feel a twinge around that incident. It left a scar. He tried to make sense of it, to understand it. He used words – soul rape, emotional incest. They helped him see. The family had betrayed him.

And left him to clean up their wreckage. He wasn’t the first. Doubtless not the last. But he would bear witness. In some way he would give testimony. He would no longer remain silent before the concept of – The Betrayal.

—

Note: I later got in touch with the feelings of that night by watching the movie “The Accused,” where Jodie Foster played a young woman gang raped in a bar.